Grandma Ruth’s Tuesday Hair Appointment

Every Tuesday, Grandma Ruth went to the beauty shop in the next town over.

Sometimes I got to go with her, and I thought it was the height of sophistication. She had her hair done every single week without fail, wore bright fuchsia lipstick from the Avon lady, and somehow always looked perfectly put together, even at home.

The Avon lipstick sometimes came with tiny sample tubes, and she would let me have one. I can still remember how glamorous that felt in my small hands.

She wore strands of costume beads and high heels around the house as though ordinary afternoons deserved the same attention as special occasions. When we were somewhere quiet like church or a concert, she would let me play with her necklaces while I sat beside her. I can still remember the coolness of the beads slipping through my fingers one by one.

Grandma Ruth and Grandpa Carrol spent every Christmas at our house.

You could feel the excitement when they arrived.

They brought armfuls of gifts and grocery sacks full of food and enough energy to fill the entire house. Grandma always made peanut brittle and peanut clusters and fudge. The grownups stayed up late talking and laughing in the living room long after we children had been sent to bed.

All of us kids would be crammed into one bedroom so the grandparents would have places to sleep. I remember lying awake on Christmas Eve listening to the sound of Grandma Ruth laughing from the other room while wrapping paper crinkled softly in the background. Even then, half asleep in the dark, I understood something wonderful was happening.

Christmas with Grandma Ruth always felt abundant.

Not extravagant exactly, but full. Full of noise and food and stories and excitement and the feeling that ordinary life had briefly become magical.

She also brought me beautiful dress clothes each year, far more elegant and sophisticated than anything I would have chosen for myself. I remember putting them on and feeling prettier, more grown up somehow, as though she saw a version of me I had not yet fully become.

Grandma Ruth had a way of making children feel special without making a great performance of it. She simply included us naturally in the beauty and rituals of her life.

She collected Fostoria crystal and loved showing it to me, because I was the only girl. She also had beautiful china that she told me she was saving for me someday. At the time, I mostly loved opening the cabinets and watching everything sparkle under the dining room light. Only later did I understand that what she was really handing down was not just objects, but the idea that beautiful things were meant to be cared for and carried forward.

Beauty, with Grandma Ruth, was never limited to objects. It shaped the way she moved through the world.

When she took us to family concerts in the city, she packed grocery sacks full of homemade popcorn made from colored kernels because she insisted hers tasted better than the concession stand popcorn.

She was right.

Every year on my birthday, she made the same double chocolate cake with double chocolate frosting and decorated it with a ceramic birthday doll that I added to my collection year after year. The cake always sat on the same clear glass plate embossed with irises around the edge.

Grandma and Grandpa transported it to our house in one of Grandpa’s old Morris Paint boxes from his painting business. The cake plate fit perfectly inside, protected by towels so it would not slide during the drive.

Even now, I can still remember the feeling of seeing Grandpa carry that box through the door and knowing something wonderful was inside it.

Grandpa came home for lunch every day, and when I stayed with them, she let me mix the pineapple and grapefruit juice for his drink. I took the responsibility very seriously, trying to get the proportions exactly right while she stood beside me in the kitchen.

Her house smelled like Ivory soap and Vicks VapoRub and whatever she happened to be cooking that day, often meatloaf. If you were sick, she would rub Vicks on your chest and cover it with a warm towel fresh from hot water at the sink. She gave wonderful back rubs too. Even now, when someone rubs my back absentmindedly, I still think of her.

I loved that she saved her McCall’s magazines for me all year long.

When I came to stay with them in the summer, we would sit together on the floor and cut out the Betsy McCall paper dolls from the back pages. After we finished playing with them, she helped me carefully glue them into a scrapbook.

I wish I still had those scrapbooks now.

Not because they were valuable, but because they represented something I did not fully understand as a child. She had been thinking about me all year long while she saved those magazines.

That kind of love is easy to miss when you are young because it feels so natural while you are living inside it.

Grandma Ruth loved telling stories about our relatives, though her explanations sometimes left us more confused than before. She would explain how many “greats” someone was in relation to us by tapping our arms once for every “great.”

Great-great-aunt.

Great-great-great-grandfather.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

At the time, it all felt impossibly tangled and complicated.

Now I understand she was teaching us where we belonged.

Later in life, she became deeply interested in genealogy. She and Grandpa traveled to cemeteries, courthouses, and the LDS Library searching for records of people long gone. At the time, it seemed like a new interest, but now I think it was simply an extension of who she had always been.

She was a person who saved things carefully.

Paper dolls.

Crystal.

Family stories.

Children’s happiness.

I think some part of me learned that from her.